Half off at closing Fresh & Easy stores

U-T FILE: In this 2008 file photo shoppers scooped up bargains at a newly opened Fresh and Easy in Point Loma. Five years later three stores are liquidating inventories to close.
— Laura Embry / U-T File

U-T FILE: In this 2008 file photo shoppers scooped up bargains at a newly opened Fresh and Easy in Point Loma. Five years later three stores are liquidating inventories to close.
/ Laura Embry / U-T File

Fresh & Easy shoppers can get everything, including wine, for half off the original price for the next three days at three stores slated for closure in San Diego County.

The discount supermarket chain's El Cajon, Santee and Escondido stores will close their doors Friday, in the wake of parent company Tesco's sale of its Fresh & Easy division to private investment firm Yucaipa Cos. Billionaire Ron Burkle's Los Angeles firm is taking over 150 of the unprofitable chain's 200 stores and closing the rest.

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After these three lock their doors on Friday, there will be 14 Fresh & Easy stores left in the county.

Yucaipa's acquisition has sparked a flurry of speculation that Burkle will use the Fresh & Easy stores to resurrect his Boulder, Colo.-based Wild Oats brand. Yucaipa kept the Wild Oats name when the company was sold to Whole Foods in 2007, and a recently launched website announces that Wild Oats natural foods are back and "writing the next chapter."

Meanwhile, Burkle said in a statement that he plans to bring in more fresh and local items to augment the convenience foods at the existing Fresh & Easy stores.

Former 7-Eleven CEO Jim Keyes will run the chain now. Employees at Fresh & Easy headquarters told retail blog Morning News Beat that they met with their new chief on Tuesday.